It’s a Monday night and I’m having a time. Burke has begun taking art classes, which affords me a rare thing – a night on my own. Like most wild rambunctious chaps, I spend it watching reruns of Columbo, doing my Czech homework, and reading.

Tonight’s an educational night to be sure. Už tři týdny se zabývám hrozným instrumentálem. Jsem v pekle. For those who don’t read Czech or who don’t want to spend four seconds translating that, just suffice it to say that if I go to the bad place when I die, the coursebook Czech Step by Step will be there waiting for me covered in spiders.

After Czech homework is done, it’s time to read. Again, this is not so much for pleasure tonight as it is to learn. You see, I am losing the plot. Again.

I have written a few books, mostly novels. And while the writing within these books is generally solid and the characters somewhat interesting and not so 2D, I do have a problem: I lose the plot. That is, I end up going on some insane journey within my story and end up in some random place with no idea how I got there. That is not a fun experience when you drink too much and it can be frustrating when you’re writing too.

To be clear, we’re talking about fiction. With my Hammered Histories, I have a much better instinct when it comes to defining and understanding a narrative and knowing what to slice out – even if it means doing that oh so famous story-cide and killing my darlings. No, no. When I am writing a longer work of fiction, all manners of things happen to my characters. The Iraqi diner owner ends up in Brazil with the Romanian hairdresser – who also happens to have an ongoing boundary feud with the guy who runs the video store. The stumbled-upon corpse has two death certificates in city hall – one from the Revolutionary War and one from the Civil War! (I thought that sounded neat and justified that I’d figure out how it was possible in any way later on. Spoiler alert: never did.) The long lost sister has a long lost brother.

You get the picture. Fun to write? Yes. But six months into writing when I was not halfway through a novel and it was already 230 Word pages, I knew I had a problem to deal with. Also, if you’re not careful, then writing first drafts can become a ‘I’ll deal with that later’ issue. And that can be a minefield. How to organize and edit?

Enter Save the Cat.